


Death Toll: 100

by Jen425



Series: To Swap Our Places (Do You Wanna Feel How It Feels?) [1]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers, Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Tokusatsu
Genre: Althernate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Evil AU, Gen, Loss of Innocence, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 16:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21256505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jen425/pseuds/Jen425
Summary: The first time Aisha kills someone, she’s ten years old, and it’s an accident.





	Death Toll: 100

**Author's Note:**

> Aisha having zero good credits makes it so hard to write her in this AU.
> 
> Written for Week of Toku Ladies. Today’s prompt is “Good Girls Go Bad”
> 
> This takes place in the universe of the “To Swap Our Places (See How Deep The Bullet Lies)” series and the other fics in this one. Basically, everyone is evil for most of their season(s) unless they were evil at some or multiple points in their run.

The first time Aisha kills someone, she’s ten years old, and it’s an accident. The woman had been one of the three checking the room for anyone the Thunder Academy hadn’t managed to evacuate, to take them for the Dark Academy or take them out if they proved useless or dangerous.

Had she not proven herself a prodigy, she likely wouldn’t have been kept alive.

That never helps her sleep easier on it.

“You’ll be assigned to a Trio after we know you don’t plan on trying to escape,” the Processor says.

Aisha sits in her new cell-room and imagines the blood on her hands.

This is where she belongs.

  
  
  


(A long time later, Dustin will wonder if the Thunder Rangers could be brought to their side like the infamous Dark Gold. Tori will smack his head and Cameron will point out that one of the people they’re fighting is  _ literally  _ said Gold, and she was still brought in as a child.

Shane will nod, and Dustin will sigh and none of them will admit that they are all wondering the same thing - why they needed to be taken so young, to be evil.

And, eventually, they’ll realize that they aren’t.)

  
  
  


The second time she kills, it’s in training, and it is very much on purpose. By this point, she’s been here for five months and she’s proven her worth, the jagged edged parody of the Wind Academy’s symbol where the Thunder Academy’s used to sit on her gold-and-black uniform.

A part of her has felt herself losing something, since she arrived, but she hasn’t let herself think about it.

She has no other options.

But she thinks about it, after this. She thinks about how this time she wasn’t horrified, just numb.

Somehow, no emotions are worse.

(She thinks about her family, especially her grandmother. She’d come from good people and definitely not from people fought unless necessary. What would they think of her now, a killer?)

  
  
  


(A long time later, Tommy will sit his new Blue down after calling up an old friend.

“You aren’t the first Ranger who felt like they couldn’t go home again, after you changed sides,” he’ll say. “Some people’s homes are still steeped with evil, but, for others, they just don’t believe they deserve it.”

“I’ve killed people,” Ethan will reply, the words blunt but his eyes dark.

“So did I,” a third voice will say, stepping out of the shadows to reveal herself. “So did Tommy, and so did most of our friends. It’s almost a tradition.”

And she’ll smile at the stunned expression on the new Blue’s face and the unsurprised look on Tommy’s.

“Aisha Campbell,” she’ll say. “It’s nice to meet you.”)

  
  
  


Aisha’s third and fourth kills are more of the same, not exactly planned and in training, but her fifth is… something new.

By this time, you see, she’d joined Adam and Rocky. Their previous Orange had failed to meet expectations, and she tries not to think too deeply about what that implies.

This is her first truly calculated kill, and, as she slips her sword out of the corpse, it’s the first time in a long time that she regrets it.

Rocky lets out a whoop and claps her on the shoulder.

“Nice going, ‘Sha,” he says. Aisha just stares at him. Adam walks to her other side and takes her hand as Rocky backs down at her expression.

“How do you  _ do _ this?” She asks.

Neither have an answer.

  
  
  


(Years later, the son of a Dark Ninja will run away from what he’s becoming and doom his brother in the process.

He’ll run away because he doesn’t want to kill and find himself memoryless and on the wrong side, regardless.

There are no good options, not when dealing with Dark Ninjas.)

  
  
  


Aisha is fourteen, when she passes the mark of fifty kills. She stopped counting in the 30s, but that doesn’t mean she can’t almost feel it.

The woman whose uniform is strangely lined in green smiles at her.

“Oh, child,” she says. “You don’t want this; I can see it in your eyes.”

Aisha glares. She’s dying too slowly, and a part of Aisha wants to listen to the woman.

But she ignores it.

“You don’t know me,” she says. The woman coughs a laugh.

“Perhaps not,” she says. Slowly, she takes something from around her neck. “But will your evilness grant me a last request?”

“Maybe,” Aisha replies, carefully unclear. The woman nods, and holds up… some sort of pendant.

“Than protect this,” she says. “Please.”

Aisha snatches it from her just as the woman goes still.

She doesn’t tell anyone about it.

  
  
  


(Years later, Cameron Watanabe will finally join his friends on the side of good, and the very former Dark Gold Thunder Ninja who he had once talked about will hold a necklace out to him.

“This is yours,” she will say. “It belonged to your mother.”

And Cameron will take it and never let it go.)

  
  
  


Her sixty-sixth kill is perhaps the one she is most infamous for, but that only makes sense.

It’s the day she kills the Yellow Ranger.

Adam had been the one with the idea of approaching the Rangers in civilian guises - they wouldn’t want to hurt a friend, after all, especially because they’d assume mind control.

After all, they’d all been lucky enough to have no choice.

Kill and kidnap a Ranger, each. That was her Trio’s assignment. And Aisha easily took down Yellow.

Almost embarrassingly so.

No - Pink is the challenge. (Kim, it’s Kim. Maybe this was a bad idea because she did become friends with Kim for real.)

Aisha knows she picked the right one to bring back for… reuse.

  
  
  


(Before-after, with all that time travel inherently implied, she will warn an eight year old girl in Yellow not to trust Aisha Campbell. 

It’s enough to save a single life, by some miracle, but she won’t know until she returns.)

  
  
  


By a lucky coincidence, Aisha’s 100th kill marks her return to the Rangers.

“Well,” she says, holding the Gold Ranger’s morpher in her hand. “I guess I’m back?”

Kat smiles, and Rocky runs and hugs her.

“It’s good to have you back,” Kat says.

And Aisha smiles.

“It’s good to be here,” she says. And, you know what? It really is. Free from gaslighting and evil spells and the guilt of her predecessor’s end…

She thinks it’ll be far easier this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @flaim-ita


End file.
